Femininomenon: How Chappell Roan Slowly Rose to Stardom

The album expected to make its debut at the UK No. 1 spot on Friday is titled The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess. But for its creator, breakout pop star Chappell Roan, the past year has been nothing but rise.

When the Missouri-born 26-year-old released her debut album last September, it marked the beginning of a slow-burning second act in pop. In her late teens, she had been signed as a downbeat songwriter by Atlantic and was later dropped. This experience prompted her to cultivate an eccentric persona, allowing the queer musician born Kayleigh Amstutz to express everything she had once repressed while growing up in a Christian community. “I grew up thinking being gay was bad and a sin,” she told the Guardian last year. “I went to the gay club once and it was so impactful, like magic. It was the opposite of everything I was taught.” Roan hustled her way – via stints back home working in a drive-thru doughnut shop – to a deal with Island.

Roan draws from the mega-pop sounds of the 2010s, from Lady Gaga to Taylor Swift. She then laces it with sexually frank asides and lavish doses of camp, performing with a maximalist, absurd aesthetic influenced by drag, John Waters, and Freddie Mercury.

What first resonated with queer Gen Z fans on TikTok has since become a more widespread phenomenon. At the Lollapalooza festival in Chicago last weekend, Roan performed in a lucha libre outfit, surrounded by female bodybuilders. She was upgraded to a prime slot and drew what organizers estimated to be the event’s largest crowd ever.

Just a year ago, Billboard reported: “Pop stars aren’t popping like they used to – do labels have a plan?” No one had seriously broken through since Olivia Rodrigo in January 2021. But this summer has been ruled by a fresh pop cohort: Brat mastermind Charli XCX, Espresso singer Sabrina Carpenter, and Roan. While the former two have been building for over a decade, Roan is essentially brand new.

Her rise, said NPR music editor Hazel Cills, came in part from Roan’s ability to operate in various spaces. She served her core audience on TikTok, found new fans while supporting Rodrigo on tour, and delivered spectacular performances on NPR’s Tiny Desk concert series and The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon. “She’s been building up her presence in all of these different spheres,” said Cills. In April, Roan released a new single, Good Luck, Babe!, about her romantic experiences with a closeted girl. “It’s her biggest and best song so far, it can do really well on television, at festivals – that catapulted her in a much bigger way,” added Cills.

Many pop stars who made their name on TikTok struggle to translate their music to the stage. However, Roan’s knack for performance has set her apart. She has performed dressed as the Statue of Liberty, at a festival where she declined an invitation to perform at a White House Pride event until they offered “liberty, justice, and freedom for all,” as well as drag queen Divine, and Marie Antoinette, inspiring audience costumes.

“For the past 10 years, alternative pop has been very bedroom-oriented,” said Cills. “Post-Lorde, Halsey, Clairo, even Rodrigo – they’re all indebted to singer-songwriter traditions and making quiet, minimalist music.” According to Cills, baroque aesthetics are now everywhere, a shift anytime soon. “There’s been a huge shift towards music that should exist outside the bedroom,” she said. Young audiences are longing for the theatricality of early 2010s pop stars that they were too young to experience, which the pandemic further made impossible. “Chappell is catering to all these desires and can take that mantle.”

Roan has been explicit about her debt to drag. She introduces herself as “your favorite artist’s favorite artist” – a nod to RuPaul’s Drag Race winner Sasha Colby calling herself “your favorite drag queen’s favorite drag queen.” Becoming a drag version of herself, otherwise an introverted video gamer, allowed her to be “whatever I want.” Her song Pink Pony Club takes inspiration from a night she spent at West Hollywood club the Abbey. “Fans have been visiting just to experience the place that inspired the song,” said club owner Tristan Schukraft. “The dancefloor goes wild whenever we play her music.”

At Roan’s headline shows, she invites drag artists to support her and has raised money for LGBTQ+ supporting charities such as the New York City-based For the Gworls, Kaleidoscope Trust in the UK, and GLO Center in the Ozarks, Missouri. She also offers a scholarship scheme providing tickets to fans on low incomes. At Heaven nightclub in London in December, drag queen Bones, the self-styled Queen of Soho, was selected after Roan’s team put out a call for performers. “It was one of the best crowds I’ve ever had,” said Bones.

The history of pop is filled with artists exploiting drag without necessarily respecting the culture or benefiting the performers. Roan feels different, according to Bones. “I know American queens who know her as the girl who used to come to the club and support the queens. Like Lady Gaga, you know exactly who she is – there’s a certain authenticity from the get-go.”

You can’t move at drag shows now, Bones said, for queens performing Roan’s songs. “Every song on the album is so great and sounds so different, or people are doing the same song in a completely different look – it’s so cool.” At a time when drag artists are being persecuted in the US and the UK, Roan’s success felt particularly striking, said Bones. “Ironically, the protesters are probably driving to whatever stupid protest they’re doing with Good Luck, Babe! on the radio.”

Roan’s success has extended beyond the queer community, Bones mentioned, because “it’s just that little bit of camp that everybody kind of loves – she has that casual star quality.”

Many pop stars who have experienced viral fame endure burnout. UK singer-producer PinkPantheress, who rose through TikTok, announced last week that she was canceling all forthcoming dates to focus on her wellbeing. Others struggle to transform one hit song into a career. For Cills, Roan’s “serious stage presence and technical talents, her ability to establish herself on social media and in more traditional spaces, signal sustainability.” With six songs on the US Hot 100 this week, in addition to a likely UK No. 1, Roan’s rise appears unstoppable.

Source: The Guardian